A writer and food blogger has been awarded stg£24,000 damages in a defamation action against the newspaper columnist Katie Hopkins.
Hopkins had erroneously suggested on Twitter that Jack Monroe approved of defacing a war memorial during an anti-austerity demonstration in Whitehall. Mr Justice Warby found that Hopkins’ tweets were defamatory and that there had been damage to Monroe’s reputation, “albeit not very serious or grave”.
The defence had argued that Hopkin’s tweets would not have been viewed by readers in the same way as her columns for more traditional media.
“This is Twitter. It’s the wild west of social media,” her lawyer told the court. Unlike Hopkins’ columns for Mail Online, or previously for the Sun, which would be checked by lawyers, “if she makes allegations on Twitter, that immediately changes the context and the credibility, because Twitter is not somewhere where one goes to make well-reasoned, well-legalled arguments … We are very far removed from a traditional media publication.”